The new accounting history: An introduction

Abstract

Over the last decade accounting history has changed significantly. This change entails both a pluralization of the methodologies and a change in the position of history within the discipline of accounting. The extent of this change is held to entitle us to speak of the “new accounting history” as a loose assemblage of diverse research questions and issues. It involves attention to a variety of agents and agencies, the conditions of possibility of transformations in accounting knowledge and practice, the institutional forces that shape actions and outcomes and the rationales that set out the objects and objectives of accounting. The new accounting history is located in relation to changes in the discipline of history itself, and is held to have implications for the current burgeoning of interest in “field studies” of accounting.